The typical university chemistry laboratory operates under several constraints which render it unable to simulate the experiences of a professional chemist. One such constraint involves the cost of purchasing measurement instrumentation. The laboratory must service a large number of students and, due to the nature of the experiments, must provide each individual student taking a laboratory course with a separate set of instruments. Thus, a laboratory will stock multiple numbers voltmeters, pH meters, spectrometers, etc. at a large cost to the institution.
High-level research and private industry laboratories routinely employ computer systems to acquire, store, and manipulate data. This option has been generally unfeasible for the university chemistry laboratory. Most current data acquisition systems require a personal computer interfaced to an instrument-emulation device placed at every station; in a large laboratory, this becomes prohibitively expensive, underutilizes the power of the personal computer, and occupies too much valuable laboratory counter space.
The advent of high-speed communication systems has made it possible to network multiple data collection instruments to a single personal computer. However, these systems typically provide only unidirectional communication from the instrument to the personal computer. Display of data at the individual stations is limited to a numerical representation of the instrument reading. More advanced display of data, such as graphical displays and viewing of data from multiple stations, are typically generated only at the personal computer. These limitations of the known art present significant difficulties in their use in a university chemistry laboratory. It is advantageous for students to view a graphical representation of data at their individual lab stations so that they may analyze trends and easily monitor measurements. Also, cooperative learning is enhanced by efficiently pooling data and providing pooled results for students' viewing.